The UpTake: The Dutch inventor behind the modular cell-phone design called Phonebloks unveils a series of tools that have the power to cut entire factories out of the recycling equation. More significantly, he's doing it all open source, creating potential opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Dave Hakkens was tired of people’s excuses for not recycling. So he took a trip to a plastic plant in his native Holland to see why more companies don’t use recycled materials. Instead of trying to convince manufacturers to change their policies, he studied how recycling plants work and designed and built his own suite of open-source machines that lets anyone turn all those discarded plastic bottles into usable materials and products.

“The goal is to build your own local plastic recycle machines,” Hakkens told me in an email today informing me that his new venture, Precious Plastic, was live.

The 25-year-old first arrived in the public eye last September when he publicly released plans to create a modular cell-phone that can easily be replaced or upgraded piece-by-piece, instead of throwing out the whole phone.The Dutch designer then exploded onto the scene when he successfully organized a “Thunderclap,” on the site by the same name, when 381 million people simultaneously received a social media message informing them about his idea.

He has since gone on to partner with Google and Motorola Mobility to help them develop their own modular phone as part of Project Ara, and earlier this month announced his plans to expand his vision for modularly replaceable devices into other industries.

When we spoke to him last year he hinted that he was previously working on a project pertaining to plastics, but that as a result of Phonebloks' success he expected that work to be delayed by months or years. Now, it would seem, we know what is that project.

Precious Plastic, based in the Netherlands, is currently a series of blueprints for the construction of three devices he designed: an extrusion machine for turning chomped up bits of plastic into lines and pipes, a rotational machine for creating hollow objects, an injection machine for filling molds, and a fourth machine, the shredder, which is still being developed. A 3D printer might seem a natural accessory to the tools, and indeed, Hakkens has plans to convert plastic objects into filament.

“The machinery is based on industry standards but designed to build yourself, easy to use and made to work with recycled plastic,” Hakkens wrote in a blog post last year. “You can bring your old plastic to a workshop like this, new products will be made and sold." According to the Environmental Protection Agency only 9 percent, or 2.8 million tons of plastic in the United States was recycled in 2012. In his video demonstrating the products, Hakkens sites a similar fact for inspiring his work.

There’s so much I'm intrigued about with this idea. There’s the fact that Hakkens is cutting out the dominant players of an existing industry by creating machines that put the power in individuals' hands. There’s also the matter that whereas a recycling plant would presumably sell the raw material to a manufacturer, Precious Plastics empowers environmentalists and aspiring entrepreneurs alike to become both the recycling plant and the manufacturer.

And then there’s the fact that it’s open source. When I first spoke to Hakkens, he said he’d rather partner with another company than raise capital. The terms he worked out with Google seem to be a more or less free exchange of ideas, where he maintains autonomy while working with another company that can help fulfill his vision for a less wasteful world. And with Precious Plastics, by making it open source, he continues to engage with the public to spread his ideas, placing the benefit he believes the world could enjoy from his ideas, above any immediate compensation.

The blue prints are available for download, for free, today. With 3D models and other visual aids on the site to assist with assembly.

Other projects Hakkens has developed include a robotic dust ball that rolls around the floor and glows bright orange when it is full, and a series of three games using nano-technology coated surfaces that convert a drop of water into a ball.

Michael del Castillo is the technology and innovation reporter at Upstart Business Journal, a member of American City Business Journals. A graduate of Columbia University, his work has appeared in the New Yorker. He is also the cofounder of Literary Manhattan, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting Manhattan’s literary community and creating new ways to appreciate literature.

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